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Tracking Email Campaigns

Jun 1, 2010
by Eric Leuenberger

In past articles, I showed you how to track various paid search traffic channels using Google Analytics and Google's URL Builder. Since measurement and tracking are the keys to increased conversion, I'll illustrate how to use Google Analytics to track both your email campaigns and your Facebook Fan Page stats.

When tracking our campaigns, remember that generally, Google Analytics looks for a few basic values in each link (you can track more items, but these are the basics). The three basic pieces of information Google looks for in links are the campaign source, campaign medium and campaign name. The actual Google variable representations are listed below as a refresher, but I included some text that will help you from the email perspective.

Campaign Source (utm_source). This identifies the name of your email marketing system, such as ConstantContact. If you don't use a third party email marketing system, you can label your campaign source something general like "Email Marketing."

Campaign Medium (utm_medium). This identifies the campaign instrument used. In the case of email marketing, your medium is "email."

Campaign Name (utm_campaign). This identifies the name of your campaign. The campaign name helps you differentiate between various campaigns or unique messages within each. Most email marketers use their message subject line or other identifying value for this parameter.

Viewing Email Campaign Results
Once you have built your url and inserted it into the proper location within your email, tracking will automatically begin. With the tracking results, you can find out a number of things, including which links were most popular with your recipients, when they visited your website, how long they stayed and where they navigated following arrival. With this information you can refine your future email marketing to gain better results.

How to View Email Campaign Results in Analytics:

Log into your Google Analytics account.

Click "Traffic Sources" from your Dashboard.

View your "Top Traffic Sources" or click "View Full Report" to see all traffic sources.

Locate and click the link identifying your email marketing Campaign Source. In our example above, your Campaign Source is your email marketing product, i.e. ConstantContact or "Email Marketing." On your Campaign Source page, Google Analytics provides details on the number of visitors generated by your campaign, the number of pages they visited, average time on your website, percent of new visitors to your website and the average bounce rate.

Campaign managers can also drill down using the segments drop-down menu. This provides even greater detail on individual campaigns, keywords, geographic regions, browser types, operating systems and visitor activity, like the most popular landing and exit pages. Each results page provides the means to drill down even further and fine-tune your data.

To get more detailed information on each, you can further filter, segment, and even drill-down by clicking the link to the page for which you want to see more information.

Now, you should have all the tools needed to more effectively track your email campaigns, as well as the Facebook portion of your Social Media efforts. Happy tracking!

Eric Leuenberger is an ecommerce conversion marketing expert and author of a leading Ecommerce blog at www.TheEcommerceExpert.com. He coaches store owners using his online coaching system www.EcommerceAmplifier.com teaching them how to increase website sales using his proven six step process. He can be contacted at 1-866-602-2673.

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